Angel of Mercy
by GallonsoftheStuff
Summary: During the First Wizarding War, an anonymous Healer struggles to come to terms with the reality of her occupation. One-shot written for the Camp Hogwarts Challenge. Prompt: First Aid - write about being a Healer.


**A/N: Hogwarts Houses Challenge - Camp Hogwarts Challenge and Marauder's Era Challenge.**

 **Prompt: First Aid - write about being a Healer.**

 **Words: Approximately 1260.**

 **A quick look into the mind of an anonymous Healer struggling with the consequences of war and terrorism.**

 **Warnings: Descriptions of injuries, sickness, homicidal thoughts. It's dark, okay?**

 **Disclaimer: I'm sure JKR harbors a dark side, but I don't think she lets it out quite like this. So no, I'm not her.**

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The door slammed against the wall as the young healer rushed into the loo – she didn't bother trying to make it to the toilets, instead going straight for the sinks. Even then, she barely made it before she was sick, her half-digested meal from earlier in the evening splattering on the porcelain. It only took a couple of heaves to rid her stomach of its contents, but her body continued to lurch for long moments afterward as the image of what she had just seen played over and over in her mind.

The flayed skin, all the way down to the _bone_ – the burns so horrible there was nothing left but a charred black _crisp_ – the utter _ruin_ of the man's body. And that's all it was. A body. No life in it to save by the time they got him to St. Mungo's – just a husk. If not for the fact that another had seen what had happened and knew the Auror, there would have been little to no hope of identifying the deceased.

She supposed, as she finally managed to control the violent urge to upchuck and turned on the water to rinse the sick down the drain, that she should be thankful for that. Not the witness – that was terrible, to see someone cursed to death in that way – but for fact that the man had died before reaching the hospital. At least they had been spared the screaming.

Cupping her hand under the running water – cold, clean, refreshing and revitalizing – she brought it to her mouth, swishing it around and spitting out the taste of her own vomit, then repeating the process, adding a head-tilted-back-gargle to ensure she got every last trace of foulness out of her mouth. A beat passed after she had finished – she put her hands into the stream again, this time to splash her face and wipe the cold sweat off the back of her neck. She pulled paper towels – Muggle convenience making its way into the Wizarding World – out of the dispenser to dry off, only to stop halfway through and brace her hands on the sink, staring into the mirror.

She was not sure she recognized the person staring back at her. The bruise-like purple lining her eyes from too many endless shifts and too little sleep; the wild and frightened look in them from knowing too much, from _seeing_ too much; the lankness of her hair, messily pulled back from her face – when was the last time she had properly bathed? The thinness to that self-same face from too many missed meals – she really should have tried harder to hold that one down; it was the first she had eaten in a while. This person did not look like her.

When she realized that, despite the ritual actions of half-cleaning herself up, she still was not ready to return to the floor and her patients, she closed her eyes, turned away from the mirror and put her back to the wall. From there, it was a simple matter of her knees slowly giving way, allowing her to gently slide down to the floor where she buried her face against her thighs, the unused paper towels clenched in her fist.

"The world's gone mad," she said to her legs, the fabric and tissue, muscle and bone, muffling it just enough that the quiet statement did not echo in the empty bathroom.

It had all started out so promising – she graduated top of her class and took a position here, because St. Mungo's was the best, had always been the best. She would learn a lot, she would learn everything she could ever want to know, if she went to St. Mungo's.

She didn't think, didn't know, didn't _realize_ – what was going on out there, the attacks, the tension, the _fear_. Others had – they had chosen to do their internships, to finish up their training, elsewhere, out of the country. Because Britain had its very own Dark Wizard and was about to go off the deep end. But she didn't _know_ – she went to work at St. Mungo's expecting such _great_ things – and dove straight into the madness.

There had been so much _hope_ – she would work with the best there was, learn the latest techniques and keep up with the newest in healing magic. And she did – only she was practicing those techniques on witches and wizards blown half to Kingdom Come and the 'newest in healing magic' was really just whatever hair-brained scheme they had cooked up in an attempt to save the next victim's life. They were flying by the seat of their robes, barely managing to keep their patients alive, let alone _fix_ them.

And missing limbs weren't the worst of it. No. They weren't even half as bad as some of the things she had seen – the _screaming_ , she would never get the sound of it out of her head, never, never, _never_. Those cases that were beyond the help of any magic, too far gone for any to pull them back, to save them. All that was left for those people was _pain_ , agony and torment for the rest of their days.

More than once it had crossed her mind that it would be far kinder to end their suffering than to keep them alive. Some begged for it – anyone they could latch onto, they _begged_ – _Please, please, just end it, I can't live like this, please, please, just make it stop_ – and she knew it was wrong, it went against every Healer's code she had ever recited… but she wanted to give them what they asked for. She wanted to give them the peace they would find in death.

Surely, that was a Healer's duty as well? Giving their patients what they wanted, what they asked for. It was in the codes too. What was more important, keeping them alive – or acting according to their wishes? Which edict was stronger? To do no harm – but they _were_ harming them, they were leaving them in agony – or to give them what they wanted. It would be so easy, all it would take was…

One. Simple. Spell. Two words. The intent to kill – could she muster that? When it was for their own good… surely she could. It would be easy – they were better off in death, safe from the suffering of life.

Or, if she could not cast that one spell, there were other ways – a little extra dose of the right pain relieving potion at the right time, mixing up two similar potions… So simple, and they would be free…

The door opened, another Healer ducking into a stall without looking at her, and she found herself staring at her wand – ten and one-quarter inches, pear with a unicorn hair core – idly twirling it between her fingers. The sweat and water had long since cooled on her skin, leaving her chilled, but just then, that was not what made her shiver.

Quickly, she tucked her wand back into the clever pocket in her sleeve and stood, turning to the sink once more. This time, she twisted the hot water tap, waiting until it was nearly scalding before plunging her hands in and again splashing her face and neck. Two paper towels saw her dry and she took an extra moment to scrape her hair back into a taut, professional bun before gathering the tattered edges of her sanity tight around her and leaving the bathroom.

She was there to save lives, not end them.

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 **A/N: So. There's that. If it gave you chills, I did my job right.**


End file.
